


What Could Have Been

by LibertyKingdom



Category: Miami Vice (TV)
Genre: Other, tw: death of an infant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-06
Updated: 2018-08-06
Packaged: 2019-06-22 19:21:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15588972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LibertyKingdom/pseuds/LibertyKingdom
Summary: Tubbs imagines a moment that could have happened if her son hadn't been murdered as an infant.





	What Could Have Been

Fingertips slide across the raised laces etched across the leathery skin. “Go wide!” She jovially instructs. Her arm pulls back, pump fakes, and then five fingers release their grasp. The football takes to the air with a surge of power, though Ricki was mindful not to lob it so hard it would be difficult for the other to catch. 

The sound of warm laughter that greets her efforts nearly causes her heart to swell so much that it seems like it will spring forth from the confines of her chest. “Look at me, Moma!! Look at me!” The young boy goads, his fingers outstretched to make the catch. His dark eyes glow with such a passion they almost appear the shade of warm copper. 

“I see you, baby! I see you!” Tubbs reassures him with ease. For in all truth, her gaze was transfixed on nothing else. She races across the field of winding green grass to be closer to him. 

Ten tiny digits welcome the football into their grasp. A championing but toothy grin stretches from ear to ear upon his face as the football is brought to his small chest and he races for the end-zone. “I got it! I got it! Moma, I got a touchdown! Did you see how fast I was going?”

He was a natural. Well, perhaps, all mothers were inclined to think that about their baby boys. Ricki lets out a whoop of joy. “I did! You were going soooo fast even I couldn’t catch you!” She fakes puffing for air just for the sheer enjoyment of her son. Although, she is quick to recover. “You know what this means?” She scarcely gives him enough time to respond before shouting “Vegan Ice Cream, Vegan Ice Cream!” She opens her arms to him. 

Angelo runs to be held in her receptive arms. Yet, he never makes it. The boy’s features vanish into a swirling pillar of smoke sprayed with glass and debris. Flashes of an overturned crib, are followed by unending replays of the terrible explosion. In the batting of her eyes, her infant son had been snatched from her life. 

Agony seizes over Tubbs’s slender figure as she lets the fiery inferno scorch her skin. Whisps of dark grey sting at her eyes as she searches the mangled heap of metal for her most prized treasure. The shattered remains of her heart turn cold with the realization that there was nothing left to salvage. His young soul had been liberated all too soon from this cruel world. 

Angelo would truly never know the joys of playing football, the art of speaking, nor spending precious time with his mother thanks to the same family that had killed her brother Raphael. 

Soon his tiny white casket would be buried and with it, all the dreams of motherhood glories. All she had left to cling to were the tattered dreams of what could have been.


End file.
